Thoughts on the military and military activities of a diverse nature. Free-ranging and eclectic.

Sunday, March 07, 2004

Equipment!

This is coolbert:

I have posted before about the abundance of weaponry in the world.

How countries that not so long ago were armed with what basically was bows and arrows technology are now able to buy the latest technology.

Much of this weaponry is not so much locally manufactured, but rather is available from the international arms market.

And much of this weaponry has been put on the international market by the Israelis. On almost a clockwork basis, for decades, starting in the fifties, the Israelis were able to capture from the Arab forces of a number of countries just massive amounts of equipment. Equipment that was put to use by the Israelis in some instances, but for the most part was made available for the international arms market. The quantities here are just way beyond the capacity of the Israeli military to ever use.

In the early eighties, during the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, the Israeli army captured just enormous stockpiles of Soviet style military equipment., hidden in caves burrowed into the sides of mountains.

How much equipment was captured and recovered by the Israelis? It took one hundred trucks, working around the clock, 6 weeks to move all the stuff captured back to Israel! The quantity of stuff we are talking about here is just enormous. Mostly small arms and such I would take it. Israeli ordnance is very good and probably stored and preserved this stuff for future sale. For sale to parties all over the world. Perhaps through middle men of dubious character and reputation.

Now, the question would arise in some minds, who did all this equipment belong to? What was it doing in caves just stored? Well, one contention was that was the full TO&E for several Soviet airborne divisions. In case the Soviets ever thought to get actually physically involved in the fighting in the area, their gear for several airborne divisions was already pre-positioned and ready to go. Fly the troops into Syria or such and truck them into Lebanon, get their gear out of the caves, loaded for bear. So the apocrypha goes. Who can say with Certainty?